Thursday, December 24, 2009

Merry Christmas

I just finished a little Christmas bookbinding project where I bound together some previous year's Christmas cards. I don't get very uptight about saving cards, but I also don't like to throw them away. Sometimes I will cut them up to make gift tags but there are always some with letters written inside or other reasons why I want to keep them. So I decided to make a book, at least it will be easier to keep them in this format! They are just sewn onto the ribbons with a layer of PVA on the spine.


Let me know if you have other creative uses for old greeting cards! And have a Merry Christmas and a happy holiday too!

17 comments:

Cat Russell said...

What a cool idea!

Anonymous said...

Wonderful idea!
Merry Christmas from a silent reader!
I stick front to back and cut gift tags, or cut around motifs and hand on a tree, or just cut shapes to use as tree trims too. A few, especially the hand made ones, go into scrap books.
Judy B

Sarah said...

This is a terrific idea! It sounds like a fun craft, and a great way to preserve old Christmas cards. I admire your creativity. Merry Christmas!

MyHandboundBooks said...

thanks ganymeder, virtualguilter, and Sarah!

good idea to make tree trims or garlands with the cards, JudyB!

Anonymous said...

lovely book! I hope you had a great day.

MyHandboundBooks said...

thanks :)

lori vliegen said...

super idea.....and what a fun way to practice or create some new bindings!! thanks for sharing your creative self with us!! and a wonderful, artful 2010 to you!! :))

Carol said...

I have a huge collection of all the handmade cards I've received over the past 20 years. Suddenly I can see a way to use them instead of storing them in bundles in a box. Some people will get their own book, others can mingle. Great idea, thanks Rhonda. Happy New Year to you and your family and I look forward to your posts for the next 12 months. I just (finally) wrote a new post and I'll really try to do better than I did this year. Cheers! Carol.

Lizzie said...

That's a great idea for your special cards. Mine just pile up in a box. The "non-special" ones do their duty in recycled form, as gift tags or tree decorations (think cut-out-circles-stuck-together-to-make-a-ball).
Your book looks so pretty too!
Happy New Year!

MyHandboundBooks said...

thanks lori, Carol, and Lizzie!

AUSTRIA KREATIV said...

found this today - its great, like all your books; love them ;)

Katy said...

Great! This reminds me that I've had my son's first birthday cards in a stack waiting to be sewn together for almost a year now. Oops. The cards are so great so I thought it would make a nice picture book. Maybe I'll bind our holiday cards, too. Thanks!

Gina said...

This is such a great idea! I’m such a sentimental person and have kept tons of cards; this would be a wonderful way to read and display them all instead of filing them away for decades. Would a plain coptic stitch work, as well?

I’m also thinking about binding old postcards and have been jotting down a lot of ideas. But since they cannot fold into signatures (well, I guess they could), it seems more of a challenge. Have you done anything like that?

MyHandboundBooks said...

thank you austria_kreativ, katy, and gina!

katy, great idea to do your son's birthday cards, i have a stack of those here too that I should do something with!

gina, the coptic stitch might work fine. the only issue that I noticed while sewing the cards together, is that a lot of them have very weak spines and when I sewed through, the cards could easily tear so I had to reinforce some of them before sewing. That might be even more necessary with the coptic stitch which can have a lot more passes of the needle though each hole, espcially the multi-needle stitch.

As for postcards, that is an issue that I've contemplated before. But I've never come up with a satisfactory solution. My collectin of postcards vary greatly in size, so I haven't come up with anything yet. But the "Blizzard Book" structure would work for cards that are similar in size. Here is nice example that i saw recently:
redpumpkinstudio.etsy.com

Gina said...

Rhonda, thank you so much for your tip about re-enforcing the greeting cards when sewing, as well as your link to redpumpkinstudio’s same-size postcard book. Her simple accordion fold with paper corners is a great solution. Some ideas I’ve thought about might obscure or remove any writing on the postcard from the sender. In her example, wonder if the cards can be removed and read and then put back into the corners? I’ll check out her blog. Thanks again!

MyHandboundBooks said...

Gina, you're welcome. Good luck with your projects!

Deb C said...

I love this! I've been putting mine in a scrapbook, using pockets to store the cards. It works very well with the letters and photos I receive. This would be a nice change and a fun project.